After putting it off, and putting it off and putting it off again, we went for our Roro booster shots last Friday arvie at Dischem Victory Park. The nurse bemoaned the fact that everyone seemed to be arriving in the afternoon after she had sat around all morning twiddling her thumbs. Reader, I made up that last bit. I’m pretty sure the nurse had other things to do besides the odd thumb twiddle.
Even though there was a small queue, it really did not take long. I videoed the experience for posterity (as one does) and did not realise that she had actually even given me the jab. The jab is frankly the most pleasant part of the process. When I looked at my vaccine passport, I realised that it was indeed a whole nine months since my last jab and my memory had faded as to how horrible the side effects are.
But I was optimistic. Perhaps the side effects would not be so bad this time. Reader, my optimism was misplaced. I started feeling odd-ish on Friday night and then woke up in the wee hours with the shivers and feeling like I’d been kicked in the arm. Saturday was spent in bed binge watching TV and gulping down panados feeling a mixture of achy bones, nausea and the shivers. Not pleasant.
Sunday morning, I started feeling a little better, which is just as well as I had a literal shit ton of work to get through, Monday, I was still under the weather, Tuesday, still a bit naar, finally by Wednesday I was almost back to normal. Well, as normal as I can be. Why get your booster now, I hear you ask? Because the fifth wave is upon us and it’s been a while since my last jab, so I thought it was probably a good idea. At least, it’s done and I can rest easy for the next few months.
I feel the same way about covid jabs as I do about natural birth. I remember this feeling when I was getting to the end of my pregnancy with my daughter. I knew what natural birth entailed, it wasn’t the MOST FUN EVER, and I was not enormously keen to go through the experience again. However, the baby was in there and was going to have to come out somehow. She was five days late and only arrived after some encouragement from the midwife. She was also four kilos so perhaps I should’ve done cartwheels, gone for a short jog, anything to bring on labour earlier.
Hahahahahahahaha!
Reader, I was so large there was no way I was jogging anywhere, at the end I could barely waddle. My niece saw me in Sandton the day I went into labour and said to her mother,
“Look at that poor woman, she can barely walk.”
My SIL: “That poor woman is your aunt.”
Yes, I have just compared the sacred act of giving birth to having a covid jab. What is the correlation? Nothing really, except that I call the side effects from the jab “Baby Covid” because that’s what it feels like. A smallanyana dose of the Roro. And, as always a reminder of why we don’t want to get Covid again and have to experience that whole wonderful smorgasbord of nasty symptoms for an entire month as opposed to a few days.
Film/TV recommendations:
I did try and watch the new Rebel Wilson movie, Senior Year on Netflix which looked suitably silly and cheering for when I was man down with baby rona. It wasn’t, dear reader. It was depressingly bad. I then rewatched How To Be Single with Rebel and a really kickass script on Showmax. Yes! I can now get Showmax in my lair – and I reflected on the fact that it really does not pay to try and rush the creative process which is what I feel Netflix is now doing. The quality of their films is going down the toilet although their doccies are still good.
Speaking of, I watched Our Father which was excellent but slightly vomitous. Super religious Ob/gyn jacks off and impregnates women with his own sperm at fertility clinic and doesn’t understand why all his many, MANY offspring are pissed off with him when they discover they have quite a few half-siblings and may indeed have shagged one of their own sibs unknowingly.
I then watched Last Blue Ride on Showmax which is about the murder of Stellies student, Hannah Cornelius. Very well done but utterly heartwrenching. Not for sensitive viewers. Also on Showmax, I watched Let Them All Talk about a Pulitzer prize-winning author played by Meryl Streep who cannot fly to London to accept a prize so takes the Queen Mary 2 instead. I felt like the script was a bit loose and improvisational and then discovered that in fact a large proportion of it was improvised. I also think the movie could’ve been tightened in the edit, some of the montages went on a bit. What I did love were the in-jokes. Meryl Streep is a literary author but there is also an enormously successful mystery author on the cruise – quelle horreur! The characterisation of the three women doesn’t rely on the well-worn buddy-movie tropes and is brilliant – Candice Bergen in particular was excellent.
Book recommendations:
Twelve Secrets by Robert Gold. Such a twisty plot and a real page turner. I gobbled it up. But my fave read this past week was *cue drum roll* Impossible by our very own Sarah Lotz. Yes, she might live in the UK but she is still ours. Decent romcoms are so few and far between because you know what’s going to happen, it’s a case of how the characters get there. Well, in this book, you do not know what’s going to happen because it deals with [DELETED – POSSIBLE SPOILER] and the getting there is totally engrossing and yummy and fabulous and I just loved, loved, LOVED it. This is a MUST READ. Plus, someone should option it tout de suite, it would make an utterly fab movie. Thank you to Helen Holyoake and Exclusive Books for copies of both my books.
It is the Kingsmead Book Fair TOMORROW! If you haven’t booked your tickets yet, you can book here. Please make sure to come to our Chasing Marian panel as it will be great fun and you might even win something…see you there and happy reading! xxx
